Jesse Jackson returns with released prisoners

Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived Thursday in Washington, D.C., with the two Americans whose release from a Gambian prison he negotiated earlier this week, and plans to introduce them Friday to members of Congress.

“We hope this is the beginning of gaining freedom for all wrongly accused prisoners and relieving tensions in the country,” Jackson told POLITICO. “It’s a change in course, and we’re glad two Americans have been pardoned.”

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Navy veteran Tamsir Jasseh and former University of Tennessee professor Amadou Janneh were released Tuesday following Jackson’s five-hour meeting Monday with President Yahya Jammeh, who came to power during a 1994 military coup in which he overthrew then-President Dawda Jawara.

Jackson said that human-rights watchers became concerned in August when Jammeh announced that, to curb rising crime, he had ordered a firing squad to execute nine death-row inmates and planned to execute the remaining 38 by mid-September.

Jasseh, who served in Operation Desert Storm, said he served more than five years of his 20-year sentence after being found guilty of treason in connection with an alleged plot to overthrow Jammeh.

Janneh, Gambia’s former minister of communications, said he was arrested in July 2011 and sentenced to life in prison for printing pro-democracy T-shirts.

The two recently released prisoners told POLITICO they were not aware that Jackson, who arrived in Gambia on Saturday, was working to have them released.

“I’m here sitting with my family and it’s a tremendous feeling I have. I hadn’t expected it. I’m taken off guard and I am very grateful to Rev. Jackson,” Jasseh said.

Janneh said he first heard about his release Monday afternoon — his 50th birthday — from a guard, who had learned of the news on television. But then Janneh heard it for himself at 10 p.m. inside his four-by-eight-foot prison cell, when the news was broadcast over the prison’s speakers.

“It took a while for me to realize that it’s real,” Janneh said. “And now here we are in Washington, D.C. It’s a remarkable thing.”

"The Rev. Jesse Jackson has a long and winning record of springing American hostages from the hands of despots. In addition to Slobodan Milosevic, Jackson has also persuaded Hafez al-Assad, Fidel Castro, and Saddam Hussein to set American captives free. He has alternately described his role in these missions as that of civil rights leader, clergyman, journalist, and "citizen of the world."

The Rainbow Coalition's biography of Jesse Jackson includes an additional event:

"In August 2000, Rev. Jackson helped negotiate the release of four journalists working on a documentary for Britain’s Channel 4 network held in Liberia."